Adaptation. Film review

Adaptation: A drama film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman. The film is based on Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, with numerous self-referential events.

First of all we must comment the name of the title: Adaptation in which the director yens to draw a parallelism between the Darwinist concept (ability to adapt to the environment) and the work of a scriptwriter who must transfer any book to the big screen, in other words: ‘to adapt it’.

The plot starts with the desperation of a twin brother, Charlie, who should write a script from a really boring book based on an orchid’s thief.  Concerned with the weak storyline and leaving him with a serious case of writer’s block, Charlie decides to travel to New York looking for advice from the author, Susan. Once there, he feels unable to face her and call his brother Donald to pitch in.

While the plot is taking place, we can see as an audience, the other point of view; Susan Orlean's point of view: Her sadness, melancholy, her work and implication to write her book. Susan starts meeting with the ‘orchid thief’ and soaks up his style-life. She got impressed with the worship that that man cares about his flowers; she wants to know how it feels to care about something passionately, that’s why she got more and more interested on that man.

When Donald pretends to be Charlie on an interview with Susan Orlean, he immediately suspects of her because she has all the answers to his questions studied by heart. He and his brother Charlie follow Orlean to Florida where she meets Laroche, the orchid thief.

Once there, Charlie realized they don’t want the Ghost Orchid as a flower to idolize, but to manufacture a drug that causes fascination; Laroche introduced that to Orlean who was needed of love, and she fall at his feet.  Charlie was spying them outside the window while they were having sex and taking the drug, in that moment Orlean saw him and she wants him to die.

At that point of the film we can see how one of the central characters changes from being a sympathetic, sweet-tempered woman to a fiercely tightfisted and dangerous woman because of the effects of the drugs, and how Laroche take advantage of that condition.

Susan force Charlie at gunpoint to drive to a swamp, where she intend to kill him but the twins manage to run away and hide among the undergrowth. The next morning they escape with a car but they have a car accident and Donald dies. Charlie run again into the swamp (that’s quite repetitive and wearisome) but this time Laroche is attacked by a crocodile (pretty fanciful).

At this juncture the plot starts to be a bit contrived and personally, I was annoyed by the choppiness of the film, the overwhelming storyline and unrealistic details.

At the end Orlean is arrested, Charlie opens his heart and tells to her true love that he desires her and finally he finishes his script. (The closing scenes seem to progress too quickly).

In general, the film deals with the topic of the drugs, very present in our current society, the anger of finding new and powerful drugs that let us to other world, escape from our daily problems, be happy… but just for a moment, afterwards we need more and more and it becomes a vicious circle we can’t get rid off it.

The opening scenes are really searing: wildlife in fast motion; how plants and animals grow up and then die; how life slips through our fingers.

Actually, I really don’t recommend this film at all, because it has some awkward moments with no sense but on the other hand, it has really poignant phrases such this one that I want let you to think about:

“The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility”.